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NEWS & STORIES

Food & Hunger

In a world full of food one in eight people goes to bed hungry every night. Small farms around the world put food on the plates of one in three people on this planet. Yet extreme weather and unpredictable seasons are affecting what farmers can grow. Food prices are going up. Food quality is going down. Nearly a billion of the world’s poorest people are finding it even harder to feed their families. We demand a fairer and sustainable global food system so everyone has enough to eat. That means investing in small-scale food producers, helping farmers adapt to climate change, and securing and protecting their access to land.

In a camp for people forced to flee their homes due to the war in Abs district, Hajjah governorate, Ahmed lives with his younger brother and three sisters. He is only 14 but has a thousand reasons to end this inhuman war. His father was diagnosed with cancer, his house was bombed and his sheep, the family's main source of income, died. Thankfully the family survived and moved out to this camp in Abs.

The story doesn't end here, even though I wish it did. That would have been considered a happy ending compared to what actually happened. Earlier this year, and after seven months of suffering, Ahmed's father died, leaving his family behind to face poverty alone.

Days without food

Shortly after his father’s death, Ahmed was awakened by his sisters crying around their mother's body. Ahmed rushed into the room just to realize his mother had died. After burying her, they all moved to live with their uncle, who later sent them back to the camp because he couldn't afford to take care of them along with his own large family.

Ahmed suffers from asthma and works to provide food and clothes for his siblings. He tries to work with any opportunity he can find, people give him whatever they call, sometimes a few dollars, most of the time nothing. His sister also collects firewood that he sells on the market in exchange for food. It happens that they spend days without food.

Famine threatens

Famine is threatening eight million people across Yemen, and much of the country’s basic infrastructure has been bombed, including hospitals, schools, water-sources, factories, markets, bridges and ports.

Civil workers haven't been paid their salaries for over a year now, and the UN appeal for Yemen hasn't been fully funded for the third consecutive year, while vital life-saving ports are blocked for more than what people could afford.

Today in 2018, millions of people in Yemen are neglected and suffering, slowly battling starvation and disease. Our people have been bombed, killed, injured, scared, displaced, starved, blocked, sickened, and denied basic rights for nearly three years now.

All of this has happened in front of the very nations that promised to protect human rights. It has happened under the watch of the United Nations and, painfully, many international NGOs who are here with us, struggling on a daily basis to provide help, either because we’re denied access to local districts or because of the blockade of Yemen’s vital life-saving ports.

Through Oxfam, we have seen ugly truths that the world is silent about. We have seen death in people's eyes, bodies too hungry to live and malnourished small children suffering from cholera. We don't need to tell you what else we saw, because history is full of examples of war tragedies, some of which are still happening here in Yemen. More than 5,500 civilians have died in this war and over 2,000 others have died of cholera, mostly children and the elderly.

Since July 2015, Oxfam has reached more than 2.8 million people with humanitarian assistance, with the help of our local partners. Yet over 22 million people are in dire need of immediate humanitarian assistance.

World leaders are silent

And still, while the situation keeps on deteriorating, the war is being fueled by arm sales that kill my people. World leaders silently continue to watch what many call the world’s worst humanitarian crisis, and Yemen is facing a world-class humanitarian despair.

World leaders and the United Nations are failing humanity once again. We are disappointed and so are 29 million other Yemenis.

I desperately wish to see the war end and no more children to suffer like Ahmed. There are far too many families like Ahmed's.

Millions of people wake up every day to a living nightmare – a devastating combination of conflict and drought has left them on the brink of starvation.

Across East Africa, some 20 million people – that’s more than three times the population of the island of Ireland – are facing severe hunger. In South Sudan alone, around 6 million people are living in extreme hunger due to a brutal civil war, which is now in its fourth year. The violence has forced 3.5 million people from their homes and has decimated food production. If the fighting doesn’t stop, the situation will only get worse.

Not knowing where your next meal is coming from must be a terrifying prospect for the men, women and children who live this nightmare every day. But Oxfam is there, providing life-saving clean water and food to those in desperate need.

In Somaliland, 30-year-old Faria and her young family found themselves in a dire situation. Their livestock of 600 goats and 40 camels was almost wiped out because of drought. With just 10 goats left, Faria, her husband and their six children moved to Karasharka refugee camp where they were given the water and food they urgently needed.

“We moved because of lack of food and water,” says Faria, who is seven months pregnant. “We used to live in the rural area and all our animals perished.

“We were starving and had no one to help… Oxfam came to our rescue. We received both food and water and started cooking.”

Faria and her young family found themselves on the brink of starvation, but they survived. Sadly, there are millions of other young families across the world who continue to live this daily nightmare. The drought which has struck Somaliland is also the main driver of the hunger crises in Ethiopia, Somalia and Kenya, while conflict has left an estimated 2.5 million people in Nigeria without enough food to eat. Elsewhere, violence has also been plaguing Yemen where as many as 17 million people are in desperate need of food.

Oxfam is on the ground, helping communities in hunger-ravaged countries, providing families with food, clean, safe drinking water and sanitation.

Ireland donated €4.8 million last year to world’s worst humanitarian crisis

18th January, 2018

Despite last month’s temporary lifting of the Saudi led-coalition blockade of Yemen’s northern ports, in the past three and a half weeks only 18 per cent of the country’s monthly fuel needs and just over half its monthly food needs have been imported through these ports, Oxfam said today.

These ports provide most of the goods the country needs to import with 80 per cent of all goods coming through Hodeida, one of the northern ports. Ninety per cent of the country’s food has to be imported. The arrival of much-needed new cranes in Hodeida is very welcome and crucial to speeding up supplies through the port. But the continued restrictions of vital supplies further endangers the 8.4 million people living on the brink of famine.

Last November, Irish Aid announced additional funding of €750,000 to the UN Yemen Humanitarian Fund. This brought Ireland’s total direct humanitarian support to Yemen to over €4.8 million for 2017, and almost €11.3m since the conflict began. In addition, last year, Ireland is the fifth largest donor to the UN Central Emergency Response Fund, which has allocated USD $25.6m to Yemen.

Oxfam warned of a catastrophic deterioration in what is already the world’s worst humanitarian crisis and the site of the largest cholera outbreak on record. The organization said that the lives of 22 million people in need of aid will continue to deteriorate if there is not a significant rise in the imports of the vital food, fuel and medicine. On the 19 January the blockade will have been lifted for a month and Oxfam is calling for all ports to remain open to the uninterrupted flow of commercial and humanitarian goods.

Jim Clarken, Oxfam Ireland’s CEO said; “The wanton disregard on all sides of this conflict for the lives of ordinary families struggling to cope after more than a 1,000 days of war is nothing short of an international scandal. This is a war waged with 21st century hi-tech weapons, but the tactic of starvation is from the Dark Ages. The international community must come together and take a stand against barbarism. Shane Stevenson, Oxfam’s Country Director in Yemen, said “There should be an immediate UN Security Council resolution calling for a full unrestricted opening of ports to commercial and humanitarian goods, an immediate ceasefire and redoubling efforts for peace talks.”

While the blockade has been temporarily lifted, 190,000 tonnes of food arrived at the main northern ports between 20 December and 15 January, compared with the estimated monthly food needs of 350,000 tonnes, according to the UN, shipping agencies and port authorities. Fuel imports over the same period were 97,000 tonnes compared with an estimated monthly fuel needs of 544,000 tonnes.

Fuel tankers and bulk cargo vessels of grain have docked but no container vessels have arrived, meaning that foods essential for survival, such as edible oil, have not entered the ports for some time.

Last month the price of imported cooking oil went up by 61 per cent in Al Baidha, 130 miles south east of the capital Sana’a. The price of wheat rose by 10 per cent across the country over the same period. Food prices have been rising since the conflict started. In Hodeida in the west of the country, the price of barley is three times higher than it was before the conflict, maize is up nearly 140 percent in Hadramout over the same period and the price of sorghum has doubled in Taiz.

Due to the fuel shortages and uncertainty of imports, one of Yemen’s major food companies has reduced its grain milling operations and another is struggling with milling and distributing food inside the country.

Companies face arbitrary restrictions by parties to the conflict when moving food around the country.

The food and fuel import crisis is exacerbated by a collapse in the country’s currency which has seen a dramatic drop in the exchange rate from 250 rials per US dollar to 500 in recent weeks. This will put more pressure on prices and hit the poorest and the families of the estimated 1.24 million civilian servants who have not received, or only occasionally received, a salary since August 2016.

Oxfam said that not only should the blockade be permanently lifted but there should also be an end to unnecessary restrictions on cargo ships coming into port. It called for an immediate ceasefire, an end to arms sales that have been fuelling the conflict and called on backers of the war to use their influence to bring the warring parties to the negotiating table.

Right now, across the world, millions of people are in desperate need due to a deadly combination of conflict and drought. It seems unimaginable that it could happen in 2017 – but one in nine people don’t have enough food to eat.

We are there. We are currently on the ground helping people facing starvation in countries like Ethiopia, Nigeria, Somalia, South Sudan and Yemen.

These twins – a boy and a girl – were born in Zimbabwe, which last year experienced its worst drought in 35 years. Their mother Judy (36) fears for their future but is holding onto hope. Along with our partners in southern Africa we are working to ensure everyone has access to nutritious food and sustainable food sources – and we’re providing water and sanitation to people affected by the drought too.

We want to make sure that families like Judy’s always have enough to eat and clean water to drink because these essentials aren’t just for some people, they’re for everyone.

Our World’s Rainy Day Fund helps brighten the outlook for people in poverty.

Two weeks since land, air and seaports in Yemen were closed, aid agencies are appalled by the complacency and indifference of the international community regarding the historic humanitarian disaster now unfolding.

Aid agencies are gravely concerned about a new outbreak of cholera and other water borne diseases. UNICEF warns that they only have 15 days’ left of diphtheria vaccines. They are due to receive a new shipment late November but still have not received clearance. If this vaccine is not brought in, one million children will be at risk of preventable diseases.

The fuel shortage in Yemen means clean water in the country is more and more scarce. Water networks are closing by the day as fuel for the pumps runs out and pipes run dry. The lack of water poses grave risks to young children most of all. Schools will become centres of disease rather than centres of knowledge.

With no fuel, hospitals are closing wards and struggling to operate intensive care units and surgical operation theatres. Refrigeration units for essential medicines are being turned off for periods of time to save fuel. Doctors, some of whom have not been paid for ten months, are asking INGOs and UN to share their small supplies of fuel to run their life-saving generators; INGOs are citing one month fuel supply only.

Agencies are starting to double the value of the cash distributions to the most vulnerable people. This will enable people to buy and stock food for the coming cold winter months before prices rise beyond their means. This means agencies will exhaust their funds allocated for next year. Additionally, aid agencies have grave concerns for wellbeing of people that are currently inaccessible.

The country’s stocks of wheat and sugar will not last for longer than three months if cargo vessels are not allowed to discharge in Hodeidah, the country’s only deep water seaport, in the next few days. Even if they are allowed, food distribution systems have been severely disrupted and may collapse within weeks. Moreover, having incurred so many additional costs and in a highly volatile environment, international traders may decide that importing to Yemen is too risky a proposition to continue.

The international community must break its shameful silence and use all possible means to lift the blockade on Yemen immediately. Hodeidah port, that serviced 80% of all imports, and Sana’a airport, needs to be reopened to let in urgently needed shipments of food, fuel, and medicines. Every day the blockade lasts means thousands of Yemenis will suffer from hunger and preventable diseases. Millions could die in a historic famine if the blockade continues indefinitely. This is not the time for carefully balanced statements. The choice is between resolution, or complicity in the suffering; there is no third option.